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Los Angeles Courts Help Fight Gangs

Incongruously close to some of this city's most affluent neighborhoods and a shell's throw from touristy Venice Beach and the azure Pacific, a gang war has played out over a decade, in which dozens have been killed and scores wounded.

The conflict, driven in part by racial differences and in part by the desire to control the drug trade in Venice Beach, began in earnest on Thanksgiving Day, 1993. Members of the mostly Hispanic Culver City Boys gang, whose main turf is in the Mar Vista neighborhood, firebombed the homes of black families in the Mar Vista Gardens housing project and set fire to the cars of at least 12 members of a black gang known as the Venice Shoreline Crips.

Now the two rival gangs have become the latest targets in the increasing use here of public nuisance laws to combat street gangs, after a series of court rulings backed the views of law enforcement over those of civil liberties advocates.

Los Angeles became the first city to use a civil injunction to combat gang crime in 1987, but six years passed before it secured a second. Now, as the city adds more lawyers dedicated solely to developing cases for court injunctions that would keep gang members from gathering in public, the authorities have sought and received six such court orders in the last two years. Two of them, including one covering 75 members of the Culver City Boys, have come in the last two months and a hearing on yet another, which would cover 38 members of the Venice Shoreline Crips, is scheduled for Thursday.

''Frankly, the Police Department has seen the results and likes this technique and is very supportive of it,'' said Jim Hahn, the Los Angeles City Attorney. ''I think that's the reason we're doing more of it.''

Unlike the broad Chicago ordinance struck down this month by the United States Supreme Court, which made it a crime to linger in the presence of a suspected gang member after the police had issued an order to move on, Los Angeles's injunctions names gang members and accuses them of being involved in gang activity. The court orders usually cover only the gang's neighborhood, and in addition to barring members from gathering in public, they prohibit them from warning others of approaching police officers or carrying pagers and impose a 10 P.M. curfew on them.

The injunctions also give the police probable cause to stop and search members named in the court order at any time. Gang members found guilty of violating the injunctions can be ordered to pay fines or serve time in jail, and probationers can be returned to prison to serve the remainder of a sentence.

When the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California challenged the injunctions on the ground that they were too broad, the California Supreme Court rejected the argument, in 1997. But while opponents continue to criticize the injunctions and question the authorities assertions of success in using them to combat gangs, they acknowledge that their legal challenges have been unsuccessful so far.

''We certainly are concerned about the proliferation of gang injunctions here in Los Angeles, particularly since crime is way down, as it is in most places,'' said Ramona Ripston, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. ''But legally, there doesn't seem to be much that one can do to stop this proliferation.''

The murder rate in Los Angeles is the lowest in 20 years, but gang murders account for more than a third of the homicides here each year -- perhaps unsurprising in a city with 400 gangs and 64,000 gang members, more than any other city in the nation, say experts on street gangs.

The city sought injunctions against the Culver City Boys and the Venice Shoreline Crips after 11 gang members and bystanders were killed in the summer of 1997. In an attempt to end the conflict, the orders bar each gang's members from being seen together on rival turf as well as on their own.

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Several members of the Culver City Boys and representatives of the Venice Shoreline Crips declined to be interviewed for this article.

There are 22 unsolved slayings in which members of the Culver City Boys are the lead suspects, according to court records. One member was a suspect in several killings and was charged in two. The charges were dropped after witnesses recanted, the police said. One man was beaten and kicked to death on Slauson Avenue by at least 10 Culver gang members in 1996; the police were not called for half an hour and no one was convicted of the killing.

In 1997, after the 11 gang-related deaths, the Los Angeles City Council offered $10,000 rewards for information leading to an arrest in each homicide. Not a single reward has been collected.

Police statements filed in court in support of the injunction against the Venice Shoreline gang said gang and family life are sometimes so intertwined that some residents let members flee through their homes, closing the gates on police officers in pursuit. But the declarations also said that some residents were so fearful that their homes would be firebombed or that they would be shot by the Shoreline Crips that they did not answer the door when the police arrived to investigate a crime.

The authorities say they hope the injunction will eliminate intimidation of witnesses in the prosecution of gang crimes by making police officers the chief witnesses against gang members.

Mr. Hahn, the city attorney, said gang-related crime had decreased in every neighborhood where an injunction had been issued, sometimes by half. But critics say that can be attributed to the nationwide drop in crime rates and the addition of nearly 2,000 police officers in Los Angeles in the last five years.

Malcolm Klein, a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California and an expert on gangs, said the injunctions appear to strengthen the fabric of gang life.

About 50 members of the Culver City Boys sat quietly in a courtroom earlier this month as Judge Patricia Collins granted the injunction against them. Two days later, Mar Vista Gardens was covered in the gang's freshly spray-painted markings ''CXC'' and implied death threats against members of the Los Angeles Police Department and the District Attorney's office.

Sgt. Ruben Lopez said that gang members had told him they would not commit any more crimes.

''Collectively, we haven't been able to gauge that yet,'' he said.

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A version of this article appears in print on June 20, 1999, on Page 1001027 of the National edition with the headline: Los Angeles Courts Help Fight Gangs. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe